Ex-Financial Times Journalist Tom Foremski @ the Collision of Technology and Media

13

March

2013

|

04:33 PM

America/Los_Angeles

Your Chair Is Trying To Kill You - The Best Way To Sit Is To Slump

There's been a lot of research over the past couple of years about the life-shortening effects of sitting. Your chair really is trying to kill you, the more you sit the earlier you will die.

It might be best to avoid a stylishly comfortable Aeron chair and choose the most uncomfortable chair you can find so as to discourage prolonged sitting.

Part of the problem could be in the way we sit, our posture, and the posture we are taught from an early age to assume: straight back, shoulders back, etc, isn't a natural form.

Slumping, if it's done right, alleviates a lot of tension and allows the spinal column to do its job: redistribute stress and support the body's organs to do the things they need to do.

Esther Gokhale, founder of the Esther Gokhale Wellness Center in Palo Alto, in the video above, shows how to assume a more natural "primal" posture. (Just published on Stanford University's video channel.)

An Australian study of 8,800 people over a six year period found that for each hour spent sitting increased the risk of death from heart disease by one-fifth.

Is it because of a sedentary lifestyle? No.

A study that tracked more than 17,000 Canadians for more than 12 years found people who sat more had a higher death risk, independently of whether or not they exercised.

Esther Gokhale ... has pursued hundreds, even thousands of people around the world, mimicking their body alignment and walking style until her shadow matched theirs.

She has studied men and women in isolated African, Brazilian and Indian villages where back pain is virtually unknown, despite long hours spent harvesting, weaving, cooking and toting heavy loads....Over the years, she has become a "back whisperer" of sorts, winning over tech execs at Google and Cisco Systems, Stanford academics, working moms and medical doctors...